Page:The Commonweal (IA 0544678.0001.001.umich.edu).pdf/23

The object of this article, and of those that may follow it, is to give some evidence of the fact that Socialism is based on grounds as scientific and as irrefragable as the the theory of Evolution. My purpose is not to deal in generalities. But as, one who is mainly known to the general public as a student and interpreter of Charles Darwin, I cannot refrain from saying that precisely the same methods of observation, recordal, reflection and generalisation that have made his ideas convincing to me have, as applied to history and economics, convinced me of the truth of Socialism. Again and again we hear sneers at scientific Socialism. These are, as a rule, forthcoming from those whose ignorance of Science and of Socialism are on a par. In some rare cases, however, the contempt is poured on us and on a greater than us, ours, by those who ought to know, and in a few cases do know, better.

The contemners of scientific Socialism are, in a word, of three classes: those that know nothing whatever of the question; those that know something of the orthodox political economy, but nothing of Socialism; those that know something of political economy and of Socialism, and are yet under orders to glorify the one and to misinterpret the other.

Some outlines of the basis of our economic faith, then, are to be given. It must be understood that they are only the outlines. Nor can I claim the slightest originality for my work. Here, as with Darwin in the past, I am only an interpreter, an intellectual middleman, not, I hope, exploiting either the solitary genius or the many minds that I am bringing together. As Darwin was and is my master in biological science, so is Marx my master in economics, and for exactly the same reasons. Nor does it need any prophetic insight to see that as surely as the teaching of Darwin won and revolutionised the world of thought in so-called natural science, so surely the teaching of Marx is winning and will revolutionise the wold of thought in social science. My article begins, therefore, what is as far as I know the first attempt to put the ideas of Marx, on which, as a scientific foundation, Socialism rests, simply and clearly before the English people, in their own language, with an honest acknowledgment that they are his.

This article will deal especially with Value, and will in detail aim at making clear the meaning of the following terms: natural object, product, commodity, use-value, exchange-value, value.

To understand the essential terms in economics it is wisest to go back to the simplest condition of things, and to study man in his simplest state, divested of all the complexities of our civilisation. The simplest state of man is in one sense the solitary condition. Let us, then, picture our Robinson Crusoe on his desert island, before the advent of Friday or even the classical warning footprint on the sand. Robinson finds fruits, stones, shell-fish, poisonous berries—a thousand things. These are all natural things. They are ready to his hand. But they fall into the two familiar categories of the useless and the useful. To him at present the masses of heavy stone are negatively useless, and the poisonous berries are positively injurious.

A little later and he sets to work on a tree-trunk (a natural object), and by dint of labour fashions it into a canoe. We are not concerned with the beautifully natural touch that makes him fashion his canoe in such a place that it cannot be got down to the water. Now he has a product, a natural object on which human labour has been spent.

A little later still, to our Robinson, who has made two canoes, comes Robinson No. 2, who has made two knives. Robinson No. 1 will be happier with the one canoe and one knife than with two canoes and no knife. Robinson No. 2 will be happier with one knife and one canoe than with two knives. Now the second canoe of the first, or the first knife of the second, is something more than a product. It is a commodity. And why? Robinson No. 2 recognises in the second canoe the human labour that Robinson No. 1 has put into it, whilst Robinson No. 1 recognises in the second knife the human labour that he been put into that.

Next let us get clearly the idea of the three values. The use-value of an object is its property of supplying a human want. This may or may not exist in a natural object. The fruit and the shell-fish have use-value. The stones and the poisonous berries to Robinson, and the parasitic insect to man to-day e.g., have no use value. Use-value may or may not exist in a product, though the former case is far and away the most common. Very rarely indeed is a product—i.e., a natural object on which human labour has been expended—destitute of use-value. Intentionally this is almost never the case. A madman may waste energy on the production of an object, but even then it satisfies his immediate want, possibly. But we may get a case of a product that is not a use-value from certain of our industries. The mass of refuse that is seen outside certain factories or certain metallurgical works for which as yet science has found no use is a product, but without any use-value at present. A commodity must have use-value. For the commodity is the product in which the human labour puts into the object on which it works some use-value (i.e., some property that satisfies a human want), it will not be recognised. From all this it will be seen that a use-value may be resident in a natural object, as in air: that it may be resident in a product as in a canoe, or, in a commodity, as in the second canoe. Further, it is to be noticed that in each of the two last cases the use-value is partly due to the properties of the body as a natural object, partly due to the human labour that has been put into it. Three things finally may be predicated of the use-value of a commodity. (1) It is intrinsic to the commodity; is, as I have said, resident in it. (2) It is realised in the consumption of the commodity, for consumption conversely is but the realisation of use-value. (3) It forms the basis of wealth, of commerce, and of exchange-value. Thus we are led to the consideration of exchange value.

The exchange-value of a commodity is the proportion in which its use-value exchanges with other use-values. A natural object as such has no exchange-value. The air, the water, the land ought to have no exchange value, great as their use-value may be. In the cases where they have such an exchange-value to-day it is due to the human labour that has been spent on the bringing of these natural objects into particular positions. The air in a diving-bell has an exchange-value. The water supplied to towns by companies has exchange-value, as Mr. Dobbs knows. A product as such has no exchange-value, for the human labour put into it is not recognised. But the moment that human labour thus embodied is recognised, the product is a commodity, and it has an exchange-value. The difference between use-value and exchange-value will be clearer if it is borne in mind that use-values differ in quality, and that exchange-values differ in quantity.

Now what is value? That is not to be confounded with either use-value or exchange-value, a confusion constantly made intentionally or unintentionally by the orthodox political economist. Value is the human labour materialised in the commodity. Think of any commodity, as, for example, a tool. Abstract from it mentally its use-value, that is, its power of supplying human wants, whether that use-value is due to its natural properties or to human labour. With the use-value, whatever its source, has gone its exchange-value, since that is the proportion in which use-value is exchanged. Yet in the tool divested of its use-value and of its exchange-value there is still left the property that it is the result of human labour. It has still value. This is a difficult and abstract conception, but it us of the utmost importance. The value of a commodity is the human labour crystalised in it. When mentally we take away the useful nature of the commodity (its use-value), the specially useful nature of the particular kinds of labour spent on it, vanishes also, and only the fact that it is due to abstract human labour remains. The particular form of that human labour has gone. Whilst after this abstraction of the idea of use-value and of exchange-value only the property of the commodity as the result of abstract human labour remains, we must bear in mind that this value, nevertheless, enters into the use-value, and therefore into the exchange-value of commodities, inasmuch as human labour confers on the natural object on which it works the property of satisfying wants otherwise unsatisfiable by the commodity.

What is the measure of this value due to human labour? Time, i.e., the average time requisite under the average social conditions, and with average ability of labour to produce the particular commodity. The idleness of the one man, the energy of the other, the mere accidents, swallowed up, merged altogether in the enormous number of cases. Out of the thousands, the millions of instances of workers producing some commodity, an average time requisite for its production is deducible, and the eccentricities of individuals affect this no more than an eight-foot giant or a two-foot dwarf affects the average height of the nation.

This article and its successors will conclude with a concise definition of each of the terms mentioned: